Shades of Autumn: A Close Reading of the Autumnal Verses of Rabindranath, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Hood and Jibanananda Sudeshna Majumdar Rampurhat College, India Abstract The beauty and serenity of the autumnal landscape has intrigued poets across time, countries and cultures. Their literary expressions project different shades of autumn. This essay will attempt to explain the exposition of the spirit of autumn in the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and explore how far it is comparable to the autumnal verses of William Blake, P. B. Shelley, John Keats, Thomas Hood and the Modernist Bengali poet of the 1930s, Jibanananda Das. Though among the English Romantic poets Blake and Keats represent autumn as a celebration of plenty, the season as a harbinger of winter encapsulates the theme of poverty and a mystic melancholia as well, which is expressed through the poems of P. B. Shelley, Thomas Hood and Jibanananda Das. This article, with its emphasis on Tagore’s prose and poetic works on this particular season, compares and contrasts his views with the western perspective and finally tries to establish a link among these poets, all of who have envisioned autumn as a passing phase in Nature’s continuous process of decay and renewal. [Keywords: Autumn, seasonal poems, sharat, Jibanananda, Blake, Shelley, Keats] In Bengal autumn arrives in bright hues of blue, green and gold. As the monsoon withdraws its tearful canopy of clouds, autumn starts extending its bounties in the azure sky, in the golden harvest, in the cool breeze and in the over-brimmed ponds and rivers. The misty blue mornings, the evenings in red and gold and the silent nights, fragrant with shiuli blossoms enthral the hearts. The arrival of the season in Bengal is connotative of festivity as Durga, the goddess of power and glory and Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity are hailed in autumn and late in this season Dewali, the festival of light is observed in most parts of India. These autumnal festivities are followed by Nabanna that is the celebration of the new harvest in rural Bengal. In many of Rabindranath’s poems and songs the season is manifested through the abundance of ripe crops in the fields that is ‘the golden gift of Autumn for Mother Earth’ (‘Nihshesh’, Senjuti, 571) The festive spirit of autumn initiates a holiday mood in human mind, an expression of that has been recorded in one of his seasonal poems in the poetic drama Nataraj, where ‘Autumn’ gives ‘a home-leaving call in a holidaying note’. Moved by the call of Autumn’s lute, the swan flutters its wings for a long flight: Autumn gives a home-leaving call in a holidaying note He flutters the wings of swan and makes it fly afar. As the shiuli-bud blooms on its stem, he calls it back, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol 2, No 4, 2010 Special Issue on Rabindranath Tagore, edited by Amrit Sen URL of the Issue: http://rupkatha.com/v2n4.php URL of the article: http://rupkatha.com/V2/n4/13ShadesofAutumn.pdf © www.rupkatha.com 530 Rupkatha Journal Vol 2 No 4 The call of the road enchants it and it drops on the dust… (Nataraj, 639) The languorous fleeting clouds sail across the sky, the river flows in torrents, the wind flirts among the cornfield. Within human heart they announce the arrival of a stranger that is ‘Autumn’: Today Autumn cast a spell on the clear sunshine, The Earth heard the ringing of the holiday-bell. The holiday-note murmured in the rippling laughter of the kash bushes The holiday-note has brought the stranger-friend at the door of my heart. (Nataraj, 640) However, in his lyrical drama Sharadotsav or ‘The Fest of Autumn’ (Sept. 1908), this holiday mood of the autumnal setting is intercepted by the workaday motif introduced by the child-protagonist Upananda, who projects the theme of ‘debt- paying’ through abstaining from holiday funs. In this play the figure of the ascetic (Sanyasi) represents the priest of autumn who invokes the season and introduces its spirit through autumnal songs. In this context it is important to note that most of Tagore’s autumnal songs are based on the notes of Indian morning ragas that help to create the ambience of the season’s ascetic spirit that is represented through the lyrics. In this play the season is visualized as a child in appearance but an ascetic at heart. Besides foregrounding the theme of festive celebration, the play calls for a look within, deep into the inner-world of the mind for contemplation, which is also the message behind autumn’s gifts to mankind. It is as if the season itself participates in the Earth’s annual ‘debt-paying’ to the sun through bounties of corn and water. This metaphor of a self-expressive ‘debt- paying’ generates a melancholy mood in autumn’s overall richness that is also prevalent in the western perception of autumn as documented by the late eighteenth century English poet William Blake (1757-1827) and the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in their respective odes to the season. Blake’s ‘To Autumn’ (c.1777) in three stanzas, begins with the apostrophe: “O Autumn! laden with fruit…” that echoes the first line of Keats’s ‘To Autumn’ (19 Sept., 1819): “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Throughout the poem Blake refers to the pastoral songs of autumn and thus anticipating the third stanza of Keats’s ode: Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, (Keats, 324) In a letter to his friend J. H. Reynolds (dated 21 Sept. 1819) Keats described the sensuous charms of the season that inspired him to write this particular ‘ode’: How beautiful the season is nowHow fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weatherDian skiesI never lik’d the stubble fields so much as nowAye better than chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble plain looks warmin the same way that some pictures look warmthis struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it. (Keats, 493) 531 Shades of Autumn: A Close Reading of the Autumnal Verses of Rabindranath, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Hood and Jibanananda It is mainly the warmth and ripeness of autumnal Nature that fascinated Keats. Though Blake’s expression “and stained/ With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit/ Beneath my shady roof/” (Blake, 2) is more sensuous and forceful than Keats’s subtler voice “to load and bless/ With fruit the vines that round the thatch- eves run;”(Keats, 324), the archetypal image of autumn’s ‘golden load’ prevails both in Blake’s and Keats’s odes that associates their perception of the season with that of Rabindranath across cultures and thus tempting the reader into going for an analogical study of these poems. When it comes to the point of poetic representation and personification, it appears that Blake has visualized Autumn as a ‘jolly’ youth who sings and plays a pipe like Pan, whereas Keats’s Autumn is represented as a peasant woman, engaged in agrarian activities as the synesthetic images record: Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; … And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with a patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. (Keats, 324) A similar image also haunts Rabindranath’s poetic imagination, who in the initial song of the Prakriti section of Gitabitan (seasonal songs in the collection of songs written by him), visvaveenarobe visvajana mohichhe, describes the spirit of autumn as Sharadalakshmi, the white-attired goddess, whose glory is revealed through the pleasant, rain-bathed landscape and whose smile is reflected in the clear, blue sky and in the full-moon nights, lulled by the chorus of hedge-crickets. (Song 1, Prakriti, 329-30) The rich, mellow manifestation of the season in Nature correlates with the serene essence of the season latent within the poet’s mind as it is represented in his autumnal songs. In songs 151 (sharata-alor kamalabone) and 157 (hridoye chhile jege), the season is visualized as an abstract and pristine feminine beauty, who appears through the fleeting shadows of cirrus clouds that resemble the fluttering of her dewy veil, in the golden sunbeams that serve as her ringing bangles and in the breeze among the shiuli bower that carries the scent of her loose hair: Within she sways the heart, outside, she enthrals the world Today she has spread her gaze across the azure sky. (Prakriti, 376) In the essay Sharat (c. 1915-16) Rabindranath explains in a similar vein how autumn in the West comes hiding her face beneath the veil of mist as opposed to the autumn in Bengal that lowers her fair face to the Earth removing the veil of clouds (Sharat, 777). Besides serving as a stimulus to his poetic sensibilities, the season was also partly instrumental in the development of Rabindranath’s nationalistic dream. Rabindranath visualized the bounties of autumn in Bengal as 532 Rupkatha Journal Vol 2 No 4 a manifestation of Mother India. In the poem Sharat from Kalpana (c. 1900-01) he draws an analogy between the season and the patron goddess of the land whom he refers to as Matah Banga (the Motherland): Ah, what a graceful image of thee I’ve seen in the autumn morn! O my Motherland, your dusky form is Shimmering in a bright halo.